I think where college and pro athletes can do well is on casual sex/one night stand game. If they go for extended interactions, many of them get exposed as beta males. This can happen to well known pro sports athletes making millions of dollars to ex-college athletes who ended up having a non-athletic occupation after college.
The athlete I know best is a 6'4", White male who participated in a smaller NCAA sport. He did use that status to get some lays on campus and in his 20s. He put up a triple digit notch count. I met him post college. His bar game wasn't excellent, he rode his looks and spam approaching with weak lines. He had enough game to get the one night stands from drunk girls at the bars at 1:30 am - 2 am, but not enough to keep them around for much longer than that. Eventually, he got into a longer term relationship with a slightly older woman with many personality and occupational issues. She has some decent looks but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, especially for something longer term. He did marry her, which wasn't that great of an idea. In his marriage, he's been acting like a big time beta male pansy. I've not been impressed with this transformation or his beta-tization for a mediocre woman.
The story above is an illustration of weak athlete game. Athletes might be able to get vagina but many of them don't do extended relationship game all that well.